selfish

I know that sounds like such a trivial thing but it was so, so hard. I’ve been going out with him for over a year now. I enjoy his company but I’m not ‘sexually attracted’ to him or whatever it is you’re supposed to feel about someone you’re going out with. I go out with him because I feel I have to, that I don’t want to hurt his feelings but not because I actually actively want to. I got on with him like I get on with my friends, but he liked me in a different way and it just wasn’t fair on him to keep him in a relationship that wasn’t even.
Despite this, he really didn’t want to break up. He desperately tried to ignore what I was saying when I rang him and was downheartened and upset by the end. I feel so cruel for breaking up with him, I was trying to do what was best for both of us but now I just feel selfish.

Why I broke up with him, a comprehensive list:

1) We just want different things in the relationship. I want to keep things at hugging/kissing but he wants more even though he said he’s willing to wait. He wants the relationship to progress but it just isn’t going to happen.

2) I don’t have time, and when I do see him he complains that I haven’t seen him for long enough

3) He can be really difficult and make me feel guilty about everything, for instance he makes out that I’m the only thing good in his life and he can’t imagine life without me so I feel trapped in the relationship

4) He doesn’t understand me. He tries, but he says all the wrong things yet always pushes me to open up to him when I don’t want to.

Two things about this, firstly I am a huge believer in talking to people, but personally I don’t care who that is- if my friend was upset about something, obviously I’d want her to trust me enough to tell me, but as long as she was talking to someone that would be good enough for me. I hate it when people try to pressure you to talk to them, like it’s personally offensive not to.

Secondly, when I told him I’d been discharged from the ED services and that it was scary etc, he 1) bought me chocolates (?!) (weird choice of gift considering the circumstances) and 2) said ‘well you don’t have to worry about it anymore, it’s all behind you now’ or something, not understanding that in actual fact I still battle it every day- I’m simply better at coping these days.

5) He wants me to be someone I’m not. He wants me to not be tired all the time, to stay up later, to text more, to do this and that. I cannot do all of these things, I can try but at the end of the day these are not my skills. My friends will agree that I am rubbish with texting, but they know I try hard and they understand that (I think). It’s tiring always being told that I don’t text enough, I don’t do this enough etc etc, and at the end of the day it just leaves me feeling inadequate.

6) He’s really sensitive and struggles with self esteem. How am I going to make him feel if he knows I am not attracted to him? It will make him feel worse, and to stay in that relationship is a constant reminder. He doesn’t deserve that.

7) he deserves better. Not only does he deserve better than my personality/being, but he also needs someone who is less busy and can spend more time with him. Because

8) He is very clingy. If it were up to him I’d never do anything else but see him.

9) He’d always bring up conversations his friends had had about us, teasing him about us not having sex or whatever, like he was trying to guilt me into doing it? He’d bring it up like ‘oh max just texted me’ and so I of course am supposed to say ‘oh what about’ then he’ll say something along the lines of ‘ah just the usual’ or something but every time he tells me something about his friend’s conversations it’s about me or our relationship and I HATE it because I don’t know them and I get really anxious/ paranoid about what people think about me.

10) He’d talk about us in the future like we were going to go out forever, which freaked me out as I’m only 17! If I didn’t break up with him soon I was literally going to end up marrying him for the sake of it. That’s how it felt.

The point of this post?
Well I’m not sure. I feel like I almost need to justify why I broke up with him? Like it’s only ok if I have good reasoning and it was the right thing to do?

I realise I must sound like such a cow. I honestly don’t mean to, I just had to get it off my chest and I don’t know where else I can so that.

I absolutely hate upsetting people but I know I hurt him. I relapsed into self harm for the first time in months. I didn’t even want to, which is more unusual as sometimes I get urges and I want to but I manage to distract myself, but today I just made myself. I had to. I hurt him so I must hurt myself. It was as simple as that. I’d caused him pain so I had to inflict pain upon myself, I deserve it.

Not looking forward to the endless task of hiding it and covering it up. It isn’t bad but it’s just a nuisance. I feel like I’ve let everyone down by doing it, but yet I felt I had to. I couldn’t win.

I’m determined that this shall be my last time. I want to be able to say “XX was the last time I self harmed”. I want to put self harm in the past. I was so close to doing so but I screwed it up.

BUT, as my friend reminded me, recovery is a bumpy road. It’s full of ups and downs and you’re going to slip up on time to time. That does NOT mean I have failed. It just means that I am strong enough to pick myself back up and carry on fighting.

Sorry for the ramble, I bet it was an awfully long boring account of what’s going on in my mind. But I did write this post in the middle of the night while I have a stinking cold so what do you expect? Oh well. I live another day to feel the guilt of being the one to end the relationship. Feeling truly selfish but I hope that gradually it will dull with time.